While the invention is subject to a wide range of applications, it is especially suited for use in an apparatus for placing transparent plastic bags over garments and will be particularly described in that connection.
Bagging machines which operate in either an automatic or semi-automatic manner to place transparent plastic tubes over garments and to cut and seal such tubes so as to form garment bags for garments have been known for several years. In general there prior art machines are excessively complex from both a mechanical and electrical point of view, and therefore are usually subject to excessive "down" time, and are also quite expensive so that they cannot be as a practical manner utilized by garment manufacturers. Further, in main these prior art bagging machines cannot be used or are quite difficult to use on transparent plastic tubular material of different diameters or of different film thicknesses. These prior art machines tear this plastic tubular material, so that they must be restored to proper working condition by an operator. Still further, in general these prior art bagging machines did not have an adequate capability for forming transparent bags of a length which is adjustable as a function of the length of the garment to be bagged.
In general, these problems presented in the prior art machines have been solved by U.S. Pat. No. 4,094,128 to Vulcano and Friedman which states, for example, "The present invention relates to apparatus for continuously and automatically placing length of transparent plastic tubes from a supply of plastic tubular material, over garments and cutting and sealing these plastic tubes so as to form garment bags for such garments on an individual basis." This patent which issued to the present invention was modified according to the present invention and is incorporated as to the common subject matter in this specification. The automatic bagging machine as set forth in the above-mentioned patent, occasionally had problems with the plastic tubular material sticking to the sealing mechanism, slightly irregular severing of the material by the cutting blade, difficulty in adjusting various mechanical components of the bagging machine and limited speed of operation.
Accordingly, it is the primary object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for bagging garments which substantially obviates one or more of the limitations and disadvantages of the described prior arrangement.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an automatic bagging apparatus which has an improved sealing mechanism that prevents the plastic material from sticking to the sealing device.
It is a still further object of the present invention to provide an automatic bagging apparatus of the character described which has an improved cutting device which uniformly cuts the tubular bagging material.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide an automatic bagging apparatus of the character described which has the capacity to operate on tubular plastic material of different widths of an easy adjustment of the apparatus by an operator.
It is yet another object of the present invention to an automatic bagging apparatus of the character described which is able to operate at relatively fast speeds.
It is yet a further object of the present invention to provide an automatic bagging apparatus of the character described which is relatively compact.